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My Old School (Photo by Dave Bleasdale)
Minnesota’s two-term governor Tim Pawlenty challenged the status quo of higher education when he appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Thursday night. He talked about the role of government and how we educate our students at the post-secondary level, but the overall message was about efficiency.
“Do you really think in 20 years somebody is going to put on their backpack … haul their keisteracross campus, and sit and listen to some boring person drone on about econ 101…?” asked Gov. Pawlenty. The segment in which he discussed education can be seen here.
If it seemed unusual for a governor to be on a national television program touting alternative methods of higher education, his timing was perfect. Across the United States, public universities are raising tuitions due to budget cuts, making it harder to afford traditional higher education. Community colleges have become selective because they are oversubscribed.
Enter the innovators.
Burck Smith, an internet entrepreneur and founder of StraighterLine, an online venue for college courses, is “bent on altering the DNA of higher education as we have known it for the better part of
